Dr. Jordan Harshman

A personal statement: What does it mean to be a DBER faculty?

I am a discipline-based educational research (DBER) faculty, but what does that mean exactly? First and foremost, it means that I am a researcher that relies on empirical data from applied and basic research studies that my research group conducts to make inferences.Discipline-based education research is a somewhat new research field that is dedicated to investigating issues that deal with teaching and learning in a variety of educational settings in a systematic, empirically and theoretically based manner. The best comprehensive overview of DBER is found the National Academies Press publication on the subject:

The pieces that are important to highlight is that, as a DBER faculty in the Department of Chemistry, I understand how undergraduate and graduate students are trained because I myself have gone through that training. I have a foundational understanding of chemistry from my experiences that allows me to investigate problems in ways that would not be possible without this foundational knowledge.

Bio

Jordan was born and raised in northwestern Wisconsin and ventured throughout the midwest before coming down to Auburn University. His professional life took him through Miami University in Ohio, University of Iowa, and University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Jordan has been interested in discipline-based education research since beginning undergraduate education and is particularly interested in statistics, statistical coding, and visual display of information. Being raised near the Wisconsin / Minnesota border, he avoided growing up a cheesehead and instead remains loyal to the Minnesota Twins and Vikings.